Palin as continuation of Bush: Guest post by Lori Marso

Sarah Palin Nomination Continues the Bush Presidency's Gender Politics

            Though Sarah Palin's breakout speech to the Republican National Convention stressed her identity as a "maverick" and "reformer," a closer look at her message reveals that her selection as McCain's vice presidential nominee continues the legacy of the gender politics inaugurated with the George W. Bush presidency.  Touting that "W Stands for Women," George W. Bush surrounded himself with professional and accomplished women, such as Condoleeza Rice and Karen Hughes, sought the so called "soccer moms" demographic in the 2000 election, and staked his run for office in 2004 on issues like freeing the women of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Critics have derided the Bush Presidency for standing against women in terms of his positions on issues such as health care, wages, welfare, social security, and the tax structure.  But if we take Bush's rhetoric seriously, we see that has stood for women.  In fact, Bush has shaped a new politics of gender that has sought to hijack the language of feminism for socially conservative ends and feminize American citizens in advocating a strong, chivalrous presidency that can save us in times of crisis.  The McCain/Palin ticket continues and extends this legacy.

Palin's speech at the Republican Convention illuminates a rhetoric that is deeply gendered though we might not immediately recognize it as such.  Not surprisingly, she didn't hit on the usual "women's issues" such as abortion even though she was chosen for her pro-life views.  As a pro-life feminist, Palin has argued that "no woman should have to choose between her career, education, and her child."  Last night, however, Palin packaged herself as another kind of feminist: a spunky, white, rifle-shooting mom, governor, and beauty queen who, like McCain "doesn't run with the herd," and can stand up to tough challenges.  And in contrast to McCain, the "great man," Palin painted Obama as a feminine alternative.  In Palin's gendered and racialized universe, Obama comes off as a narcissist who authors autobiographies instead of legislation, a "community organizer" who wants to "heal the planet," a weakling who would "meet terrorists without preconditions" and who worries the "Al Quaeda terrorists" won't be "read their rights."

Real women, it turns out, support and work in the administrations of real men like George W. Bush and John McCain.  This is a fundamentally heterosexist, white, god-fearing universe where strong hockey moms, who differ from pit-bulls only in that they wear "lipstick," lead alongside strong men who "do more than talk."  They "flash a grin and a thumbs up" in the grimmest of circumstances to reassure us all that "we're going to pull through this."

As my co-editor, Michaele Ferguson, and I wrote in the introduction to W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (Duke, 2007), "the constellation of an eviscerated liberal feminism, a hierarchical gender ideology, and a neoconservative security strategy articulated by the Bush presidency represents a new configuration of gender politics whose significance and impact will extend far beyond Bush's two terms in office."  In fact, the McCain/Palin ticket promises to push this legacy even more powerfully. Packaged as a historic achievement for women, and as a "maverick" move, this ticket promises instead a man and a woman who continue George W. Bush's politics of gender with more of the same: a macho politics that favors war over diplomacy, a tax policy that disadvantages women who disproportionately fill out the ranks of the poor, a masculinized security state, hetero-sexist policies on marriage, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  This is not a break with the Republican past, but consistent with what Bush has been doing all along.

Comments

[pebird]

Say what you will about the intelligence of the Republicans - they run linguistic rings around the Democrats.

I love Palin's ambigious statement regarding her daughter's pregnancy:

"We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents"

A casual reader (most of voters) would take what away from this? That her daugher had a choice and made a decision regarding her pregnancy? It is sufficiently vague to provide multiple meanings and cover all bases.

This statement coupled with the (to paraphrase) 'now our family's business is off limits to the press' is brilliant - after slipping in the political message, discussion of the meaning is shut off.

Absolute genius.

[pebird]

Hope this isn't too much off-topic...

I have a different spin on the Palin nomination. I don't think it is about women voters as much as about white men.

My thinking is something like this: the general atmosphere for change is strong is the electorate. The theme of a historic, symbolic act (elect an African American) that can absolve the US of the Bush Years has some resonance.

There is also unconscious racism throughout the country, encompassed most strongly in white males. However, this is not as strong as in the past - these voters are split between doing "what comes natural" vs. "the right thing". They need a reason to stay the course and not make a break.

So the Republicans give them that reason - vote for a women for VP and you can vote against the black man with no guilt.

[Nathan A. Franklin]

Pebird, the above formula is freakin' brilliant.

I heard Zizek speak in San Francisco last Friday. He mentioned that the notion of interpassivity is increasingly being mobilized within Republican party discourse.

In effect, Zizek points out how Republican discourse allows its followers to enact their fury to the extent that the top brass is in the position to never concretely render a coherent, concrete program to thus assuage the symptoms of their rage.

The problem,for Zizek,is that the former tells its subjects that we know very well that you're angry, et cetera, but we have a number of behind the scene experts who will manipulate the structure so you do not have to worry about anything--"you can," remarks Zizek, "explode in your rage, we will have great fun, you will not have to think, our Karl Roves and so on will secretly do the work."

So, to put it in Zizek's terms of course, the seemingly violent act of "disturbing" the androcentric logic of our poltico-ideological horizon by have Palin on the Republican ticket is in fact a sign of impotence in the sense that the structure preserving the status quo will not change but will endure.

Is Palin object a?

[8]

Hegel (who respected Luther as much as he did say Caesar), and old hegelians would side with the Right over gangsta-marxists, however brutal, tasteless, and philistinish the hicks may be....for dat matter, even GWF Hegel rarely sounded as racist as Marx hisself, who used the n-word nearly as often as a Carlyle did.....

[Jodi]

Nathan is right--PE Bird's formula is brilliant.